Welcome to the Web Site of CanaDiana

Canadiana: materials (as historical documents and artifacts) concerning or characteristic of Canada, its civilization, or its culture; also: a collection of such materials (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

CanaDiana: a conflation of the word Canada with Diana, the name of the mythical underground river of Siena: a new place for Canadianists to meet

Under the streets of Siena and Toronto secret rivers run: though Siena is thousands of years old, and Toronto a creation of the nineteenth century, both cities feed, through buried rivers, into an ancient geological past which continues to shape their future. Canadiana is a way of imagining the confluence of Siena's river Diana with, among Toronto's many buried waterways, Taddle Creek (originally called the "Little Don River,") flowing beneath the University of Toronto's downtown campus and shaping the contours of Philosopher's Walk. To bring together varied streams of learning, to communicate ideas and share a rich variety of cultural forms and experience integral to both Italy and Canada: there are the aims of our association. We believe that our 'underground' or autonomous status, vis à vis the Universities of Siena and Toronto, will form a valuable complement to these institutions in our common task of facilitating Italian encounters with Canadian writers, artists and Canadian Studies scholars, and of creating initiatives for the discussion, promotion and translation of their works.(Janice K. Keefer)